


Perception

by CorsetJinx



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, ambigious deities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 09:06:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7568323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorsetJinx/pseuds/CorsetJinx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I have to know, I have to or else you will just rule me until the end of everything because you know and I do not."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perception

The blue light of the Void tinges everything with a peculiar sharpness. Details stand out either too clearly or with such a strangeness that her eyes cannot help being drawn to them. Fish should not swim through what she thinks is air yet there they are - living, breathing fish moving in a shoal as though this were the Wrenhaven and not…

She is not sure how to classify the Void. It’s name suggests a space, a bizarre nothingness and in a way she supposes this place is just that.

But the nothingness has _things_ in it - stolen or copied from the waking world. Emily recognizes some of them - the shattered form of the building she had stayed in with Callista Curnow for one, during Hiram Burrows’ reign as Lord Regent. She thinks, perhaps, that if it were not in such fragmented condition she might be able to scale its edifice and find her old room.

The Outsider stands out too, she finds. His appearance seems too normal for such a place as the Void, as though he might be just another person caught in the undertow as she was.

His eyes prove her wrong, as they always do.

If she will ever be able to discount that, Emily is almost certain the way he speaks will do the job well enough.

Before he has the chance to levy questions at her or start a circular argument for her to fumble through she faces him, lifts her chin and demands. “Why did you never tell Corvo about Delilah?”

For a fleeting second, she thinks his brows might lift - in surprise or question, perhaps even both.

This is certainly the most direct she’s ever been with him.

The Outsider does neither. Merely stands there, still and unreachable even though they’re standing less than six feet apart.

“What purpose would it have served, Little Empress, if he had known?” His tone is soft but it is not gentle. No cradle song for this, the picking over details years old to her and likely countlessly more to him.

“You knew.” She says back, rather than answering him. She isn’t sure she has an answer - her own details too muddied for her to see clearly, even under the eye of a chaotic god.

Of course he knew. The Outsider is said to walk among all, see all.

“Yes.” Is all he says. His eyes stare into hers, darker than the bottoms of oceans unexplored by human feet.

Emily fumes in the silence, pulled in multiple directions by her own disquieted thoughts.

In the waking world, her throne is no longer her own. Here, she is but herself - stripped of title and other things more surely than Delilah could hope to accomplish on her own.

“You are not the first to rise in your anger.” The Outsider remarks, unblinking. “Nor will you be the last.”

The temptation to curse him is strong, but she stays silent. Takes a moment and draws in a breath.


End file.
